Every year, Tod Caviness turns a handful of talented, sensitive poets into trained monkeys at the Fringe Poetry Vending Machine. Theatre patrons and random drunks at the Orlando Fringe give them a title and three words. This is what they give back.

Monday, June 22, 2009

The Pickleotopus Monster

Down in the valley of Pickle Green,where the bumpy grass grows strong and tall,and wind whistles throughwith a scent so sweet and vinegary,blending in like bi-level chameleon,and waddling along near the dirt, is the much fabled memberof the mammalian family,the Pickleotupus Moster.

Zig-zagging with his furry belly,just inches from the ground,anyone lucky enough to spy him,would wonder if he knew hisdestination,or had become drunk on fermented crabapples,but if you could pan outwith your wide camera lens,you would see the clever creatureeluding a very strange man,in a tin foil hat,scanning the ground for any signthat the storybooks or tabloids were right.He pushes before him a razor scooterwith a wheel of old sharp cheddar cheesetaped to it’s frontin hopes of attracting this wily beast,and most curious of all,having once read that the mating call of the Pickleotupus Monster sounded sohe shouts in high pitched tones,“Supercalifragilisticexpealidotious”over and over.

For a brief moment, he becomes hopeful,when he suddenly hearsa hissing sound from behind.But the stories never told him,and nor will any stories he tell,for Pickleotupus Monster spit travels very far,very quickly,and is fatal.

--

All I know is that Dani O, winner of one of our Poetry Smackdowns, wrote this tasty little hallucination. I think she may have been an early afternoon arrival the second Saturday, so this might have been written for one of the little tykes enjoying Kids Fringe events that day. ("Supercalifragilistic" HAD to be a request word.) Either that, or it was the other end of the spectrum, because it's just the sort of title somebody would request if they were tripping their nuts off.

And now I've got the "Hiphoppapotamus" song from Flight of the Conchords stuck in my head.